1. What temporal averaging period is appropriate for MM5 verification?
It is possible to pull off MM5 values at a grid point every time step, but does that mean that we should compare model output with near instantaneous observations?
… probably not…

2. Wind Speed at the University of Washingon
(Sampled every 5 seconds: reports 1 minute averages and highest 5 second wind gusts each minute )

3. MM5 Output Every Time Step from the 4-km Domain: Much Smoother!
Wind Speed

4. MM5 4-km output every time step appears to have the temporal variability of approximately 15 minute-average winds
Why?
Winds are averaged spatially due to model resolution, grid-box averaging of some terms, and model numeric and explicit diffusion.
Thus, for verification we should compare model output to temporally averaged observations.

5. UW Verification
The Northwest Verification Effort selected grid to point verification because of the sparse data in many areas.
At observation locations, model biases, mean errors, mean absolute errors, and rms errors were calculated.